Tearing Apart at the Seams
by Anguis
Summary: The handcuffs prompt . . . it could've gone the other way. Prompt: BA, handcuffs.


**Summary:** The handcuffs prompt . . . it could've gone the other way.  
**Disclaimer:** The characters and universe of _Law & Order: Criminal Intent_ belong to Dick Wolf, NBC, USA, etc. No copyright or trademark infringement is intended.  
**Author's Note:** Written for Porn Battle VIII for a prompt of Goren/Eames, handcuffs. I had two ideas for LOCI fics this round--one angsty, one fluffy--but only enough time to complete one of them. Guess which one won out? (I'll write LOCI fluff eventually, I promise!)  


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**Tearing Apart at the Seams**

Bobby Goren had always been a bit of a claustrophobe. Maybe it stemmed from that awful game of hide-and-seek that Frank's protestations of innocence could never quite make up for, maybe it was just his hyperactive powers of observation and conjecture running amok, or maybe it had something to do with the fact that most things simply weren't built to his scale. He'd managed to tame it for most of his life, tamp it down and shove any escaping symptoms under the cover of his sizable list of idiosyncratic tics. After Tates, though, any constraint or hint of confinement sent him spinning wildly towards panic. Even ties and buttoned collars threatened to get the better of him, and he panted his way up more flights of stairs than his bum knee could handle if Eames wasn't there to stand beside him in the elevator.

Eames.

He'd risked everything to get his partner back, and now she's risking it all to . . . to do what, he's not entirely sure. They can never go back to how they were before, and with the way his life keeps sliding downward, he honestly can't see why she wants anything to do with him at all. He hates that he's put her in another untenable position yet again, but he can still read her well enough to know that she feels the need to do _something_, and while she might find this abhorrent, she fiercely refuses to be deterred because it's _doing_ something. It's comforting (perhaps selfishly so) to know that, despite the torrent of vituperative rhetoric she loosed on him, she's nearly as afraid of losing him as he is of losing her.

And so it is that he finds himself in her bedroom with all the lights on, her handcuffs linking his hands to the headboard, his feet joined by his own pair of cuffs, and nothing in between. His no-longer-thirty body (and all of its attendant neuroses) is on crude display, and she is voyeur, jailer, and comforter all wrapped into one very messy (very messed up) package.

She's only just secured the restraints, and already he's suffocating, and he has to get out _now_. Flesh and bone, even with the superhuman strength endowed by adrenalin (_epinephrine_, he can't help correcting), is no match for stainless steel. Panic wraps its long, cold fingers around his neck and squeezes, and darkness crowds the edges of his sight as all the blood in his body seems to rush in one wave to his feet (an absurdly long distance, as he's been told on more than one occasion).

Her own breath puffs lightly in his ear as she whispers, "Breathe, Bobby. Breathe."

Suddenly he can, and he gulps great gasps of air that do nothing to alleviate the symptoms; quite the opposite, in fact, and still his brain cranks out bits of trivia. _Hyperventilation. Hypocapnia (the irony of too little carbon dioxide). Respiratory alkalosis._

She spreads a delicate hand on his heaving chest. He remembers he is _here_ and not _there_, not that it helps. The crushing weight that may someday turn out to be a heart attack is only a reminder tonight of all the -pams he has refused to take home and slip into bed with (clonazepam, diazepam, lorazepam . . . he doesn't need his well-worn _Physicians' Desk Reference_ to know that solace sought in little pills is temporary at best, and the permanent solution of large numbers of little pills is not as much of a temptation when his medicine cabinet is bare).

Her brow crinkles and her lips compress with that sad little quirk that still makes his pounding heart pause to twist, and she's probably wishing to be fending off drunken advances in some seedy bar or buried in a pile of backlogged paperwork or cleaning her toilet--doing anything but watching her pathetic partner unravel. She's unflinching, though, and desperate to haul him back to her by whatever means necessary.

It might have been minutes or hours (probably not days), but finally, _finally_, his mind is starting to shut down, collapse in on itself as it did in those last few hours between abandoning his calculated belligerence and waking up to IVs and bustling nurses, when single digit numbers had rolled away from his grasp, and his mouth was too dry even to beg for water, and his last incoherent thought was of Alex. This is what he's needed, what he's craved ever since: to just _not think_. No theories tumbling around his cavernous skull, no mental cogs grinding noisily along, no fucking metacognition analyzing all the ways he's falling apart and estimating how many more cracks he can sustain before shattering. His mind is blessedly silent, and his consciousness is consumed with sensations--beautifully uncomplicated, glorious sensations.

She's saying something, and it might be "Are you alright?" or "Can we order a pizza after?" or "I love you" or "Geez, you're a disgusting freak!" They're just words, any and all of them, so they slither through the crumpled sheets on the floor and into the darkness under the bed to hide with the rest of the monsters lurking there.

She touches him with a firm, confident grip belied only by the fluttering pulse at her neck and those large, dark, wet eyes. He's already half hard, and it's wrong in so many ways that this is the first erection he's had in months. Maybe it's a good thing that his mind is incapacitated, because it should be shouting, _"You sick bastard!"_ at the top of its nonexistent lungs. No such self-recrimination being possible, he arches into the curve of her fingers.

She quickly strokes the mounting pressure to an achingly exquisite level, but he won't last long, so there's a sudden weight on his belly as she clambers astride him, her thighs splaying uncomfortably wide and her knees not quite touching the mattress and her legs clamping around his sides like a leather strap. Her face is hazy and far away, and her lips slant in a determined line, and she is beautiful.

His feet jerk apart as he tries to get a purchase on something--anything--to gain a bit of leverage, but the metal bites into his ankles, and a new rush of panic wells up within his chest. He alternates yanking at the restraints on his wrists and ankles with jolting his hips up, and as the urgency of both increases, she tries to balance herself with one hand on his torso and one hand reaching awkwardly behind her, nearly coming unseated as he pitches and tosses about. And then she grabs him roughly, digs her toes into the mattress to rise, and swiftly impales herself with a moan and a grimace.

She is wet, and if it comes from a tube rather than arousal, his cock can't tell the difference without a guilty conscience to reproach it. She is warm, too, and it almost starts to thaw the chill that has been settling deep into his bones for longer than he can remember.

Pinpricks of blood are beginning to blossom beneath the handcuffs, and he's thrusting and crying and coming and hiccuping, and it is quite possible that he is tearing apart at the seams.

Alex had insisted on a safe word, but there are no words, no thoughts, and nothing has ever been safe.


End file.
